Mobile Driver’s Licenses (mDLs)—digital versions of your physical driver’s license accessible through a smartphone app—are rolling out across states and countries right now. Based on the ISO 18013-5 standard, mDLs promise greater convenience for individuals and reduced fraud for businesses and government agencies. Surely we all understand what we’re getting into, right? Well, a group of identity experts were surprised to discover what some are calling “latent surveillance by design” embedded in these systems.

• The ISO mDL standard includes latent “phone home” capabilities that enable targeted tracking
• If these capabilities are activated in your mDL, you won’t necessarily know it
• Issuers can remotely enable or disable this tracking without your knowledge